


Heart of Stone

by whoistorule



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 15:09:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoistorule/pseuds/whoistorule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes about Lady Stoneheart</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart of Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dalyeau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalyeau/gifts).



Naked they threw her into river, and naked she was when she awoke. The green-blue river cradled her in its womb, and her new life burnt with a fiery purpose. There would be no bread and salt for traitors, no mercy but that which whistled through an open rope. With each rotten fruit that ripened in her forest, the monster that was her son let out a silent roar. It was he that judged them, his crown that punished them. One death for each of her children, and the children they would not bear.

~

At night she does not sleep; sleep is for the living, for the dead, and she is neither. The iron swords prick her salt-dried skin but she does not bleed. The grey ghosts of her children play before her. Bran walks, he climbs while Rickon chases after him, Arya dirty and screaming, a sword in her hand, while she brushes Sansa's long red hair (Ned loved her hair). All but Robb. Robb sits before her regal, a monster's head on her boy's body, the drums beating blood like arrows. One. Two. Three.

~

The Lady Catelyn Tully used to dance and laugh. She had a sister and a brother and five children, whose songs and shouts rung in her ears, whose playing kicked up dust, whose skinned knees bled on the snow dusted grass. A living husband warmed her bed, but now she sleeps with bones alone. Bones and an iron crown and a wolf who was once a boy. The river that gave her life flows the wrong way and winter clouds her breath with white puffs that march in funeral procession amongst the ghosts.

~

At first memories drip from her skin like water, translucent and clear; her children smile before her eyes, her husband sits solemn under a white tree, her sister wilts, her brother drinks, her father burns on the river, but the mud in her bones soaks them up til nothing is left but red. The blood that coats her hands is no longer the Frey's, but Robb's, the knife an arrow, pulled from his heart. Her son's blood tears down her cheeks and his crown stings in her fists til the world runs grey again.

~

Could she dream, she'd dream her belly big again, she'd dream Ned home, she'd dream winter safe around them, building its white walls, coaxing her family to sleep. Instead her skin fills with sorrow. It sags from her wrists and burrows in the folds of her clothes. Did the woman who was Catelyn Tully lose her firstborn at the Twins, or before, when they ringed his curls with iron and his fists with blood.

~

His hair is white; not the white of winter, the warm white of shock, the worm white of death, but beneath the aging mask he wore was the ghost of a boy who smiled at her husband's table and swore at her son's side. A man need not wear the name of Frey to be a traitor. The man who was Theon Greyjoy once choked promises between broken teeth as the rope glittered silver around his thin neck in the rain. "Now," he whispered, "And always." Did he not know her heart was stone?

~

He bent his knees before the noose fell before he gripped at the rope with phantom fingers, and oaths fell from his pouting lips. She didn't believe them when they smiled, but her son did. Put his faith in a letter in those mangled hands, the ones that swung the sword that stole the lives from her children, that burnt the cold walls that she made her home. Perhaps this creature loved her son once, but death closed those doors to them all.

~

They say saltwater runs in the veins of the man who smiled, who betrayed her son, who broke the bonds of brotherhood, who broke all oaths for the promise of gold, for the glory of princehood. He should have known that even broken crowns buy nothing but blood and sorrow. He should have stayed by her son's side until the last. He should have died with arrows in his chest while the lions roared. Instead he'll die in silence. (Under the water, do wolves howl still?)

 ~

She danced with ghosts in the halls her mother won with her husband's blood, the beat of the drum slowing the beat of her heart until she ran, crown clutched between her thinning fingers, blood pooling in her empty womb. Mercy, she begged for, but there was no mercy for the daughter of traitors. Now Jeyne dances in the wind, while her crown rests nestled with Robb's, winter's cold frosting the iron together until the two were one.

~

Winter burns the leaves from the trees, and their naked grey forms look like statues in the firelight. Her daughters dance in their shadows, one tall and fair with flame licked hair, her treebranch arms raised high above her head. She looks up to the sky, she flies amongst the clouds. The other hunches low, her bramble hair rough, a sticksword in an outstretched hand. In the morning she hangs Freys from the trees and her daughters dance no more.

~

They threw her from their towers, her naked body greying as the river beat its course, washing the blood from her skin as her skin tore against the rocks. The breath that woke her corpse whispered live but it stunk of of the dead. In death, she sunk beneath the waves, and reawoken each breath is a fight. When Bran woke from his fall, did he sink, too? Did the earth sing its siren's song, begging him back home? Or did he fly?


End file.
